Somnambulist

This review has been a long time coming. I was always intrigued with the premise and I picked up the paperback a couple of years ago, intending to read it, but scheduled reviews and my own writing got in the way. Last year, when I had a brief lull, I tried to find time again, but again events conspired to stop me. I bought the audio book, thinking it might allow me to circumvent my own workload, but I soon discovered that I simply don’t have the time for audio books, between work and kids. In the end, I bought the kindle version (so yes, I now have three copies of the Somnambulist!) and recently I found enough of a gap in things to actually read it.

Good job I did.

I’m not particularly au fait with the Victorian era. I’ve seen a few movies, of course, read some Conan Doyle, D.E. Meredith, Stockwin, Cornwell, Collard and so on, but it’s mostly been centred around military or espionage plots. I used to love the Edgar Allen Poe type genre, but it seems that for the last decade or two no one has been able to write gothic Victoriana without throwing in vampires, which has started to bore me to death . Not so, this book. The Somnambulist has a much more real feel to it, is solidly grounded in the real world, does not run to monsters and fantasy.

The plot is nicely involved and with a number of surprises and twists, as young Phoebe Turner, through a series of unpleasant circumstances, finds herself the companion of a lady in an eerie gothic country house. The contrast, incidentally, between her early days in squalid London and this country residence, is very nicely put over. In her new life, Phoebe starts to unearth clues as to the gaps in her own past. Quite simply there is far too much in the book to try and put over here, and spoilers for the Somnambulist would be all too easy to slip in. Suffice it to say, the book is a rather twisted journey of realisation and discovery filled with rich characters and chilling moments, written against a vivid background.

If I were to label two down sides for me, they would be the level of involvement of the book – which at times became perhaps over-complex, forcing me to try and mentally place all the strands as I read – and the pace. I realise that the latter is a natural symptom of the milieu in which Fox is writing, so that’s not a comment on her ability or style, but more on Victorian history and why I don’t often read it. The more Fox has tried to put over the most authentic feel of character and descriptive for the era she can, the more the plot slowed by necessity, which is my main problem with 18th/19th century literature (I cannot stand Thomas Hardy, am excruciatingly bored by Austen and the Brontes, and just about tolerate Dickens.)

That being said, please don’t be put off by this. The characters are extremely realistic, the locations fascinating, the narrative atmospheric almost to the point of smog leaking from the pages, and the twisted plot and its excellent conclusion very well planned and well written. As a debut it was a heady and fascinating book to read, and it has achieved what is probably the most important goal of any debut author – it has made me put Fox’s second book, Elijah’s Mermaid, on my ‘must read’ list.